Author Archive for: ‘Chris Crum’

Microsoft unleashed Windows 10 on Tuesday, and Twitter is using the opportunity to launch a new experience for the operating system. You can see what it looks like above. It includes Twitter Live Tiles; multiple photo tweets (you can upload up to four photos per tweet); animated GIFs’ Vine playback; previews for tweets with photos, vine videos, and other content …

Earlier this month, Amazon Web Services announced the launch of AWS Device Farm, a way to automate and scale app testing on actual mobile devices. It was only announced for Android and the Android-based Fire OS, however. On Wednesday, Amazon announced expansion of the offering for iOS apps. While it’s not quite here yet, it will be very soon. The …

Earlier this year, Google announced that it was expanding paid search advertising to the Google Play store. Given that people frequently go there to search for apps, this seemed like an obvious place for search ads, and it’s still surprising it’s taken Google this long to offer them to app makers. Better late than never though. Google has been testing …

As you may know, Microsoft launched Windows 10 this week. It has Bing built into it, and the company expects a billion to be on Windows 10 by 2018. It also expects to see Bing query volume gains from 10 to 15 percent as early as September. It expects this to grow both from new users who have upgraded to …

Google announced a pair of data feed enhancements for Google Merchant Center in an effort to help merchants better update their ads. One of them is geared toward large retailers while the other is for small ones. For large retailers, Google has added a new feed type called Online product inventory feeds, which let you quickly update price, availability, and …

Back in 2012, LinkedIn launched its endorsements feature, which lets users endorse others for various skills. Lots of endorsements in key areas can make a member look good when they’re looking for a related job, a partnership, or other career-related opportunity. The feature quickly became popular, and users have racked up countless endorsements in the years since. Now, Facebook is …

Yelp reported its second quarter earnings on Tuesday with better than expected revenue, but worse than expected profit, sending shares tumbling. But that wasn’t the only news to come out of the company. Yelp also announced the resignation of Max Levchin from its Board of Directors, and said it will discontinue display advertising by the end of the year. Levchin …

Etsy is launching some changes to its search feature aimed at helping users find more items of interest, but the reaction to the changes from sellers is pretty mixed, if not leaning toward negative. When you’re selling products in any online marketplace, the way the search feature works is of great importance. Of course appearing in web searches on search …

About a month ago, Pinterest announced that it began to launch Buyable Pins on iPhone and iPad, enabling users to purchase items directly from he app from select partners. These include Macy’s, Neiman Marcus and Nordstrom, as well as Shopfiy stores and retailers powered by Demandware’s enterprise ecommerce platform, the Demandware Commerce Cloud. Demandware announced on Monday that their offering …

Google announced a new feature that tells users what the busiest times are at millions of places and businesses around the world. It’s basically using the same mobile technology that it uses to tell users about traffic to give them information that might make them want to reconsider visiting a business at certain times. Google explains in a Google+ update: …

In Google Cloud Platform news, Google announced the addition of Customer-Supplied Encryption Keys for Google Compute Engine in beta. This will enable you to bring your own keys to encrypt compute resources, the company says. This is available in select countries, though Google doesn’t clearly specify which ones. You can access the keys through the API, Developers Console, or command-line …

Google shared some results of some testing it conducted with interstitials. This is of particular interest since the company has indicated using them will likely start impacting your search rankings in a negative way. Have you used interstitials on mobile content? Have you noticed any impact on your search visibility that appears to be related? Discuss. Google looked at behavior …